a photoblog

Tag
winter

This picture of the Tobin House, one of Adelaide's Art Deco buildings, made whilst I was wandering along North Terrace in Adelaide's CBD around 5pm. I was enjoying watching the winter light playing across the facades of the buildings along North Terrace.

I was on my way to the opening of Frédéric Mouchet's interesting exhibition at the State Library of South Australia. The exhibition centred around the South Australia of the French explorers in the 18th and 19th centuries in that Mouchet has retraced their journey around the unexplored coast of Nouvelle Hollande, including Kangaroo Island, Encounter Bay (Victor Harbor), Spencer Gulf and the Great Australian Bight.

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I've been exploring the Hindmarsh River estuary at Victor Harbor, South Australia. I'd initially scoped the malaleucas with a digital camera--the Sony NEX-7, handheld:

It's a low light camera on a tripod situation.

I returned for a more considered photo with a medium format camera--Rolleiflex SL66--- using black and white film and a wide angle lens.

Now I'm trying to make a 8x10 photo using the Cambo monorail and black and white film. I've been waiting for the mouth of the river to open in winter, then for the winter rains to ease so that the swamp-land dries out. It's been been very wet this winter. I was wanting an overcast day with little wind.

That was today. I started the photoshoot with the Cambo around lunchtime, but the rains returned before I'd really got started. So I have to wait for the rains to ease, the ground to dry out, and an overcast day.

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I've come down to Victor Harbor after a three week absence, which included a small trip to Melbourne. There has been a lot of rain on the Fleurieu Peninsula recently, and it was difficult to access Kings Head this afternoon due to the landslides along the Heysen Trail. It was very muddy.

On the way Ari and I met a couple of photographers walking the Heysen Trail on their way to Kings Beach. They werre taking lots of photographs. One photographer had a big, fancy Nikon DSLR with a zoom lens--he also had two standard poodles which I'd previously seen --- whilst the other had a Mamyia DM22 medium format camera , which he had bought second hand from a guy in Japan for around $3000. It was cheap because it had a 3 year old 16 megapixel digital back.

These kind of cameras are not readily available in Adelaide second hand.

As we walked along the trail towards Kings Beach I mentioned the medium format guy that I once started out with an old Mamiya RB67, but that I found it heavy and had swiched to Rolleiflexes. He added that he also had a Mamiya RZ33 in his studio but that it was too heavy to take into the field.

When I remarked about the cheapness of the digital back he said that it wasn't necessary to go beyond a 33 megapixel digital back, unless you were doing billboard posters. That was useful information for me.

What I gleaned from the brief encounter was that a new digital medium format camera is now under $15,000, and it can be acquired for around $10,000 new. Suddenly a digital medium format camera becomes feasible.

Ari and I pushed on to our favourite location at the foot of the Newland Cliffs to check out the tide and the wind conditions for an early morning shoot. The two guys weren't interested in coming down to the rocky outcrop--it was in deep shadow and the rocks were very wet and slippery.